FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention concerns an automatic weapon, in particular an automatic machine gun with a firing mechanism for single shots and optionally for continuous firing.
In the ordinary gun mounts and machine armor, it is customary to trigger a single shot with electrical or electrohydraulic trigger mechanisms. In case of a power failure, it is then a problem to fire machine guns of the type mentioned intially with single shots. Ordinarily, such machine guns have a mechanical foot trigger because the triggering forces are normally so high that they cannot be overcome by hand, or only with great difficulty. The foot trigger and also alternatively the hand trigger has the disadvantage, however, that the foot or the hand cannot be taken away from the trigger in the extremely short time for discharging one shot. The result is that a firing burst has already left the gun barrel in a short time.